


A Chapter For Envy

by facade



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Argentina National Team, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Mild Angst, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facade/pseuds/facade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hello :) is it possible to to ask for a Argentine NT fic, with Lavetzzi/Di Maria. Where Di Maria is Jelous because of the time Levetzzi spends with Messi, and It's up to Gonzalo to point it out. lots of fluff and maybe some makeup sex ( Non-graphic) Please."</p><p>It's time to let the ink on this chapter of them dry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something, Nothing, Everything

He felt as if he were choking - on something, nothing, and everything - as if the air around him was hanging just out of his reach - unattainable, untouchable, unbreathable. Every movement - of his, of theirs - amplified; the smallest touches and brushes of flesh on flesh transformed into catastrophic blows on his soul, an exchange of laughter between the other two becoming nothing more than a verbal abuse directed towards him. 

He could see fingers, fingers tracing that small dip nestled in between Eze's shoulder and collarbone but he could feel, feel the action translating to category five force winds against the straw-walled barriers around his heart. He could hear their laughter carrying from one side of the otherwise empty training ground to the other - together, knew that the light breeze of the day would take those dancing sounds to some distant place - together, where they would soon expire - together... With a newfound weight on his shoulders he bowed his head, had to look away as a fear took residence within his chest and crawled deep, deep down into the depths of his core. Together. He could see the two falling against one another, their silhouettes becoming one in that moment, as the laughter became too much for him, for them, but he could feel a divide forming within his chest. 

Ángel pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth and bit down hard as he watched Eze make his way in between the sticks and felt the level of his... something, rising and rising until there was so much of that something that it became nothing and everything. He could hear Leo taunting the other, could hear an "I don’t think you're ready for me, Pocho" followed by a shared laugh, an "I don’t think you’re ready for me" followed by a boot making contact with a ball. 

He tasted blood as the words, as the sounds echoed off of the empty stands and found him standing there, alone. Ángel clenched his hands at his sides and the edges around the pictures before him started to blur, to distort with the exception of the two faces before him - 'them'. His breathing became exaggerated, forced as he tried to push each inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale through and around that something, nothing, and everything lodged into his throat. It was all becoming too much for him - overwhelming, nauseating - yet he couldn’t look away; it was like seeing a wreck on the side of the interstate, horrible and awful yet captivating and remarkable all at the same time... and like a motorist honking in a car behind him, a hand collapsed on his shoulder and grounded him, offering him a temporary escape from his thoughts - a savior. Ángel quickly spun on his heels and released a sigh of relief as he was met by familiar eyes of brown beneath curls of brunette, a warm smile in the midst of rough facial hair: Gonzalo. 

"I didn’t even hear you walking up," Ángel quietly muttered, flinching ever so slightly at the sound of his own voice; it sounded so foreign to him, as if it belonged to someone or anyone else. His words weren’t reflective of his thoughts as his thoughts were with the two other men meters away from him and it was rare that his thoughts were left unvoiced. Unfamiliar. "What's going on," he asked though he didn’t care for the response, didn’t care for anything outside of the antics of the people on the pitch now behind him. He saw Pipita's lips moving in response but the words that must have escaped from them seemed to come with no sound – disconnected.

Gonzalo whispered a passive response, offered a quick shake of the head and a simple shrug of the shoulders: all to say nothing. He soon threw his eyes beyond the man in front of him and leaned slightly to the side so he could see the two other men in full, shaking his head as a parent would a child as he found the two playing around on the pitch. “Bird watching?” It wasn't so much a question as it was an observation. He chuckled quietly as he watched the eyebrows of the other furrow before him, his smile deepening as Ángel threw a questioning look around, palms held up towards the sun: confusion. The curve on his face held and a slight chuckle escaped his lips as he tilted his chin up towards Eze and Leo. “The lovebirds," he reiterated, deeming the nickname he had given to the two within the past few weeks as self-explanatory. “I see enough of that during training. I don’t know why you’d torture yourself with the sight of those two more than necessary.”

Ángel laughed, not because he found the words funny but because he found them to be quite an understatement... because he was hearing his greatest fear outside of his own mind... because he heard his boyfriend and his captain being referred to as lovebirds as if the two were a pair, a thing, an item, a 'they'. He laughed, not out of humour but because torture was such a laughable understatement for what he was doing to himself. It felt as if he was having his sternum and left ribs broken, felt like his still beating heart was being ripped out of his chest in the most agonizingly slow way... but broken bones were nothing compared to the pain of the broken hopes he now seemed to hold of 'them', the loss of a vital organ would be nothing compared to what it felt like to lose this vital person. Yet he lingered. Stood there, seeming to beg for more... 

A tilt of his lips and a shrug intended to convey a sense of carelessness. "It doesn't bother me." A quick lie, meaningless words thoughtlessly thrown in the spaces between himself and the other. Ángel threw a final glance over his shoulders, released one more disappointed sigh, and turned to head back down the tunnel.

Pipita held onto his doubts, chose it best not to tell his compatriot how he perceived him to feel, and simply quirked his eyebrow as he recalled seeing a look on Ángel's features that he knew all too well, a look so often mirrored back at him. He angled his body to where he could see the dark shadows of the tunnel swallow Ángel completely and let the soft smile on his face disappear as his focus shifted back onto the two men on the pitch. A feeling of sympathy – no, empathy for the United forward consumed him accompanied by the urge to do something about that all-too-familiar look he had detected in the other's eyes, the need to fix it by making it go away. 

He was already walking out onto the pitch, placing one foot in front of the other, when he decided that a direct confrontation would not be ideal as he didn’t have all of the facts of the situation. Hell, he didn’t have any of the facts, didn’t know if there was a situation, just a burning feeling within his gut. With a dismissive shake of the head he began his withdrawal, eyes falling on the sweat-stained training shirt clinging against his chest: a thought, an idea. He made his way through the dark of the tunnel and stumbled into the locker room, choking on the stench that had remained from his fellow countrymen as he began to undress. 

He could hear their laughter echoing off of the cement block walls shortly after, could hear it bouncing around the empty spaces of the building over the sound of his running water. He could imagine the two figures walking into and out of one another's paths, could almost hear the inaudible whispers exchanged between them, and he cared... his reasoning for caring, even if it was only because his gut told him Ángel would care, seemed irrelevant at the time. 

There was a moment of shock: a "Christ! I thought everyone had already left!" accompanied by the relieved laughter of the other, a "shit, Gonzalo!" entwining with the sounds of water droplets falling from dampened skin to a tiled floor. Gonzalo's smile in response was as empty as the chuckle he let escape his lips. "Someone has to keep an eye out for you two lovebirds," he started as his eyes found Ezequiel's, "and Ángel seemed a bit tired," he sighed out as carelessly as he could, hyper focusing on massaging his shampoo into his scalp, "so I relieved him of duty." A moment of stern eye contact. That was all he needed.

Pipita could hear Leo's playful scoff but he saw the drop in Ezequiel's features; so there was a situation. He saw a good-humored soft touch and a series of gentle tickles from the captain to the other but had his question answered definitively as the other brushed him off and stammered out a "what do you mean". He simply shrugged his shoulders as Ezequiel managed to put together the words "is that what, what you think this...?" He felt his own heart sputter as Eze held his face in between his own hands and twitched the corner of his lip as Leo's playful expression faded to confusion beneath furrowed brows.

Leo had known why Gonzalo had lingered but was stunned to find that he was still here, was shocked further by the implications of his words and Ezequiel's actions. He opened his mouth to ask for more information but closed it quickly as Gonzalo shook his head dismissively towards him, an unvoiced 'I'll explain later' exchanged between the two. It was something, it was nothing, it was everything.


	2. Let the Ink Dry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "...words never seemed to fix things as well as they broke them." (It's actually a very poor summary of the chapter. It's just my favorite thing of the things I've written for this chapter).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had meant to update this before a year and a half went by but... Regardless, I was looking up something for one of my other works (you all know how I am with my writings, in love with the research) and I was reminded of this work by [this](http://www.psg.fr/en/News/003001/Article/72083/Di-Maria-J-avais-hate-de-commencer) article.

The feeling of wood pressed up against his knuckles, of his knuckles pressed up against wood and yet he couldn’t bring himself any nearer – not a yard nor a foot nor an inch. His fingers clutched tightly against his palms to form a fist, his forehead pressed against the same wooden slab as his knuckles. The Earth spun, time passed – seconds, minutes, an hour – and yet still he stood still. A few of his teammates had passed in the time he had stood in the halls of their hotel, some had laughed as they had presumed him drunk while others had settled for assured words and encouragement as they had assumed his state a result of warranted tiredness from the day's training session, but none questioned his presence. Since 2008 they never questioned his presence outside of this door, outside of his door, their door, though his teammates, his friends merely skimmed the surface when it came to their presumptions of them. 

He was right there, he was on the other side of that slab of wood and across a few feet of carpet and yet he could still feel the distance between the two of them growing. He was right there and yet when he reached he was continents away, galaxies. He wanted to say that it wasn’t his fault but he wasn’t twelve and he had known better. It wasn’t a matter of fault, wasn’t a matter of who had been in the right, of who had been in the wrong. It was a matter of “you didn’t tell me” and as much as he hated that, he had known that he hadn’t bothered to ask. He hadn’t bothered doing a lot of the things he should have been doing lately. He had never bothered to tell Ángel how lucky he felt to have him in his life, to have him in the way that he did; he wondered if the other even knew. He had never told him that when he was with him, when they were together all of his little impossibles suddenly seemed possible. Worse still, he had stopped asking him how his day had gone, had stopped asking him what he was thinking about. It wasn’t that he had stopped caring about any of those things, he had simply been distracted and he could admit that he was a little bad at all of this. He would try harder for him though. He would try harder for Ángel… He ((finally)) slipped his card into the door’s reader and watched as the little light flashed to green and winced as the door opened, afraid that the cross lock had been engaged but ultimately the door opened without restraint. 

“I was wondering how long you were going to be standing out there,” Ángel laughed out from his place on his bed, back pressed up against the headboard and a smile engraved against his features. It had been fake at first, it had been a forced smile with nothing behind it but Eze always had a way of bringing the raw warmth out of him and he wasn’t pretending for long. He was becoming increasingly convinced that his other possessed the touch required to turn Pinocchio into a real boy. “Zabaleta actually texted me, told me he thought you had fallen asleep against the door but I was afraid that, if I opened it, you’d just…” he held his arm out in a “L” shape and allowed his forearm to fall swiftly -plop- “but I figured you’d wake up eventually.”

He simply watched the other man with a soft smile pressed to his lips. “I wasn’t sleeping out there,” Eze sighed out as he tossed his card onto the top of the table, watching carefully as it slid beneath one of the coasters. He knew he'd forget this, would spend at least thirty minutes looking for that card come morning. “I was thinking – about us.” He could see Ángel flinch and he hated that the other seemed to be assuming the worst about where this conversation would be going. “I was thinking about you,” he pressed as his teammate found his feet and started running his fingers through his hair, “and I was thinking about…”

…but Ángel couldn’t take it anymore. He had seen it and if he didn’t speak up soon, if he didn’t speak up he’d soon be hearing it and it was more than he could take. “Please, Ezequiel.” His words come out as a whisper, as a prayer. “Please don’t finish whatever it is that you’re trying to say.” His face was stained with tears and his vision had become blurry but he could still see Ezequiel in the mess of it all, could still see the man who was still his, his for at least one minute more. “I saw you after training today, I saw you with him and I… I… I just don’t understand why you’d wait until now to tell me, Eze? I don’t understand why you’d…? It’s been months – months! – since we’ve had an actual discussion about anything, weeks since you’ve spent more than ten minutes with me and I’m not… I know I should be shocked but I’m not. I just can’t understand why it’s taken you this long to tell me, Eze.”

He couldn’t believe what he had just heard, couldn’t believe that Ángel had been afflicted with this for weeks and hadn’t bothered to discuss it with him once. He wasn’t twelve but “you’ve been feeling this way for weeks, for months and you’re just now telling me all of this?! I’m not some kind of gypsy mind reader, Ángel! Fuck, I’m not even great with reading body language and yet you expected me – me! – to figure all of this out on my own?!” He hadn’t meant to yell – he hadn’t meant to not either – but his emotions had the better of him and he hated, hated that Ángel, his Ángel would choose to dwell in his own misery for weeks on end rather than talk something over with him. “You know, last I checked, you have a voice and you’ve never been afraid of using it! Why now?! Why are you afraid of using it with me?! What, you think you can’t talk to me?!” (“I am talking to you. I’m talking to you now!”) “No, Ángel. I’m the one who’s talking. You would rather sit there and smile, pretend like everything is okay than tell me that you’re not. Why are you so afraid of being not okay with me?” His cheeks had become sticky and wet, his voice pitchy and raspy, and his hand: shaky. He hated that Ángel seemed to mirror himself.

“I don’t know,” he sighed out as he collapsed back onto the sheets of his mattress, the crown of his head perfectly framed by his own hands. “I just… You’ve been so happy these past few weeks, spending time with…” He choked on the name; three simple letters, three simple sounds and yet he couldn’t say it regardless of the number of times he’d said it before and he’s worried, worried he’d never be able to stomach his name in the future. “You seem happy with him, happier with him than you ever seemed to be with me. I didn’t want to take that away from you or worse, I didn’t…” What he hadn’t meant to do didn’t matter anymore; he should have known that it’d come to this with or without his help. “I hadn’t wanted to force you into a choice. I was, I was afraid of saying ‘me or him’ because I felt – watching you two together, laughing and smiling – I just knew that you’d choose him. I just knew that you would and you didn’t, you didn’t disappoint me.” He hated how weak he sounded but it perfectly portrayed how he felt: desperate, helpless. “You could never disappoint me.” Broken.

Ezequiel crumbled as the broken sounds of his other’s voice reached him and he hated himself for having done this to him; he wasn’t twelve so it didn’t matter where his intentions were, if they had been present or nonexistent. He found his feet moving towards the number seven, found his knees pressed into the carpet before him soon after, his hands in his and his in his. He had to touch him, had to hold him as the only thing he’d have left were his words and words never seemed to fix things as well as they broke them. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t twelve so it didn’t matter that there was nothing he needed to be sorry about. “I never meant to hurt you. Leo and I…” and he hated how his other flinched at the name, squeezed his hand a little tighter. “There’s nothing going on between us, Ángel, and I’m not choosing to spend more time with him because I want to spend less with you. I’d never choose him over you, Ángel. Never.” (“That’s a lie. You’d choose him over me in a starting eleven if it ever came down to it.”) He’s relieved that Ángel had attempted a joke, relieved but he still saw the worry laced in his gaze, saw the sadness in that smile. “He wouldn’t even be on my bench, much less my pitch.” (“If you’re going to try to sell me on a lie, make it a believable lie.”) He laughed as the other’s smile reached him, pulled his hands from his and ran his finger along his chin. "Okay. You and I. We’ll be together forever...” Forever. Such a beautiful lie but one he could tell with only the best intentions. ("Maybe we'll even play together for the same club one day...")

It had started off slowly, like the first drop of water falling into the ocean, destined to birth tsunamis but starting with the smallest of ripples. His lips pressed against his until they were no longer, his lips pressed against his neck until they were no longer, his lips pressed against his collarbone until they were no longer. No worry for time, no worry for discovery as the hands of the clock had frozen leaving them preserved by the heat of his flesh pressed against his. Lips pressed against his collarbone, against his neck, against his dampened cheeks, against his lips; fingers sneaking beneath the waistband of his basketball shorts. Lips pressed against lips, pressed against his neck, pressed against his collarbone, pressed against his chest, pressed against his abdomen, pressed against… and ecstasy consumed him.

An apology blended with forgiveness as one of his hands found a thigh, as his hand found a drying cheek, as the new flavours of his tongue stained the tongue of his other’s in an inspired gasp. The assurance of their unity – “if you hurt then I burn” – heard and yet never spoken as the two became a part of one another, as they blurred into one another, as they melted and fell into one another; an unvoiced whisper of security – “you’re mine but am I…?” – promised as inked arms wrapped firmly around a body. Like a river their silent promises and assurances, their apologies and their aspirations, their flaws and their perfections poured out of themselves and into one another, smoothing those immovable boulders of doubt and fear into mere pebbles… but like a loan shark collecting his due, the hands of father time shifted and pressed forward once more, counting out the seconds with unbridled haste. Everything around them fell into a haze as colours once so profound blurred into no more than two distinctions – light and dark – and a hand tightly gripped a waist, afraid to let go, tightly gripped the back of a neck… but time can wait no more.

It’s time to leave this in the past; it’s time to let the ink of this chapter run dry...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is Gonzalo and Leo so there's that.


End file.
